Sorority re-enacts voting rights march of 1913

Sorority re-enacts voting rights march

DANIEL R. PATMORE / SPECIAL TO THE COURIER & PRESS
Marchers with the Evansville Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., march down Riverside Drive to the Evansville Museum’s Old Gallery for a re-enactment play to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the Women’s Suffrage March Sunday.

DANIEL R. PATMORE / SPECIAL TO THE COURIER & PRESS
Stephanie Terry speaks to Evansville Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., before the re-enactment to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the Women’s Suffrage March Sunday evening in front of the Civic Center.

DANIEL R. PATMORE / SPECIAL TO THE COURIER & PRESS
Marchers watch a re-enacting play in the Evansville Museum’s Old Gallery about the story of women that took part in the Women’s Suffrage March a 100 years ago on Sunday.$RETURN$$RETURN$

Sandra Sears, playing the part of one of the marchers in the Women’s Suffrage March, tells her side of what she saw at the march in the Evansville Museum’s Old Gallery.

Photographs by DANIEL R. PATMORE / SPECIAL TO THE COURIER & PRESS
Carole Whitlock, center, and Marisa Knox, right, lead the Evansville Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., down Main Street on Sunday in the re-enactment to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the Women’s Suffrage March.

When members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority participated in the Women’s Suffrage March of 1913, they were motivated by the hope that women would some day gain the right to vote.

According to historical accounts, the marchers were jeered and jostled as they made their way through Washington, D.C. Members of the black sorority had to fight for the right to march next to other women instead of behind them.

When alumnae members of that same sorority gathered in Evansville on Sunday to mark the 100th anniversary of the event, they celebrated how much has changed since then.

“There were some bold and brave and courageous women who took a stand on March 3, 1913, for our right to vote,” said Stephanie Terry just before the group began a re-enactment of the 1913 march. Terry is a member of Delta Sigma Theta’s Evansville alumnae chapter, an organizer of Sunday’s event and a member of the Vanderburgh County Council.

About 40 people took part in the march from the Civic Center to the Evansville Museum. As they walked, some held signs with slogans such as “Women are citizens too!!” and “No is not an option. Let us vote!!”

The march was followed by a short dramatic production at the museum.

The drama, written by local resident Kelley Coures, told the story of the 1913 event through both narrators and actors who played sorority members who participated in the event.

The characters spoke of their fears, of being spit upon and shoved by onlookers, by seeing crowds of unsympathetic men along the parade route.

That 1913 parade was an attempt to renew public attention for the suffragists’ cause. By that time, the movement had already been active for more than 60 years. (It would be seven more years before the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.)

So activist Alice Paul came up with the idea for a parade in Washington. It was to be held one day before Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration to capitalize on the crowds in town for that event.

According to 2001 article written for the Library of Congress and excerpted on its website, the procession included more than 5,000 participants. Marchers included women from other countries where women could already vote, American women representing various professions, state delegations and men who supported the suffragists’ cause.

Participants marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S. Treasury Building, where a group of women and children presented an allegorical drama.

Along the parade route participants were heckled and shoved, and the male supporters who marched were ridiculed by onlookers,

Helen Keller, the deaf and blind writer and activist, was slated to speak at the event, but was “so exhausted and unnerved” by the unruly scene that she was unable to deliver her speech as planned, according to the Library of Congress article.

Delta Sigma Theta groups around the U.S. organized commemorative events on Sunday, including one in Washington, D.C. They did so as part of anniversary celebrations for the sorority, which was formed at Howard University in January 1913.

Some of the modern Delta Sigma Theta alumnae said the event gave them new respect for their founding members’ courage.

“My mind goes back to how young those girls really were,” said Debra Meriweather, who joined the sorority while a student at the University of Evansville.

“They placed themselves in a life-threatening position.”

Dr. Ruthie Jimerson, an Evansville dentist and the vice president of the Evansville alumnae chapter, agreed.

Jimerson’s daughter is a high school senior — nearly the same age as the sorority members were during the 1913 march. The mother said those young women lived out the advice that she gives to her daughter and daughter’s friends.

“That’s what I always tell them: Stand for right. And that’s what those young ladies did, and that was amazing to me.”